Overlapping Eternities
by Flobbergasted
Summary: Annie no longer lived in linear time, really. For her, it could quite literally always be tea time. (spanning Series 3, with spoilers)


**Summary:** Annie no longer lived in linear time, really. For her, it could quite literally always be tea time. (spanning Series 3, with spoilers)

**Disclaimer:** Toby Whithouse, it's all yours. Take it if you want it. Bring Mitchell back while you're at it.

* * *

A CUP OF TEA is a controlled situation. Werewolves could tear up your home, vampires could turn their blood lust on you unexpectedly—hell, hell itself could be at the door—but there was always a moment of peace to be found in the drinking of—even the holding of—a fresh, clean mug full of strong tea. You can hold a mug in your hands. You can take your tea however you like it. Honey? Lemon? Each cup is a small triumph in the battle of civility versus chaos.

Well, coffee for Mitchell, but it amounted to the same thing.

* * *

Annie knew that George knew about the torch she was carrying for Mitchell. What he didn't know—and what she hadn't realized herself until recently—was how long that little flame had been burning, living on a few breezes every now and then, just waiting for a bellows.

She knew George and Nina whispered about it, how sweet and pitiful it was. A vampire and a ghost: cute idea, but a pipe dream, an impracticality. But she couldn't help it. And she didn't know how to hide it. She had come back from that abyss behind the door not for her old pink house or her old human life, and only nominally for George. It was a plain and simple fact: she had only returned to this earthly plane because of Mitchell. And now she was tethered to him, in particular, in a way that she hadn't been before, and couldn't explain—to herself, let alone to her friends. He was her world now, whether she liked it or not—and whether he liked it or not. She was no longer afraid of the voices, or the ambitions of the vampire clan, or Owen. This time around, a new fear arose in her: without _him_, her… saviour… she was nothing but a vapour on the wind, a trickle of steam rising from a humble teacup.

* * *

And then, awkwardly, maybe inevitably, they'd fallen into each other.

He had always been one of the few who could see her, but now he looked at her.

He'd pull her onto his lap whenever she walked through the room. She'd go with him on domestic errands—buying milk, posting bill payments—like they were a proper couple. So what if no one could see them together; they were together.

Those crinkly eyes. Those green fingerless gloves. Those silly sport jackets. He was all hers. And crikey, could he turn on the charm when he needed to. Did he even notice he did it? He had to. Annie would have voluntarily walked through a thousand world-bridging doors into the unknown before telling him, aloud, that the charm worked on her. More important was that he seemed to drop the charm around her. He seemed… just… comfortable. Good thing they'd started out just as roommates.

The nights were nice. George and Nina actually needed human-like amounts of sleep. Not so, her and her fella. It was tea and talking for them. Cuddling and whispering. Strolling by the sea at the earliest light. Sleeping, even, if they wanted. Tweedle-cold and Tweedle-colder, yanking up the blankets, nuzzling. Waking up together.

The best part, though, was the laughing. They had laughed together in the early days, gone in on a joke or two together (often at the expense of George). But they had lost that along the way; Mitchell had started to slip away from himself, into darkness, and Annie had started to slip away from the world, into nothingness. But when they found each other, saved each other, the laughter returned. The smiling. God, she hadn't seen his smile for so long.

(_So what_ if there was something behind it, silently tugging at the corners of it. So what if there was something she didn't want to acknowledge, something he maybe wasn't telling her.)

At least they had had a few perfect weeks.

* * *

She tried to dismiss the little push Lia had given her, toward Mitchell, as beside the point, but there was a niggling little feeling… she knew she was malleable, manipulable. She didn't like to admit it (who would?), but there had been Owen, hadn't there.

In those weeks, after she'd learned the truth about the Box Tunnel Twenty, when Mitchell was AWOL, she questioned it. Their love. She questioned herself.

How could she have hitched her wagon to that falling star?

And yet she had.

And she missed him desperately.

* * *

It just wasn't fair. He had said it would be for eternity. He had said that was what scared him.

Well, she had an eternity ahead of her. And they had thought that he would as well. But then… he had changed, and he had been driven over the edge, and he could only return in order to end himself… and now he was gone.

Lucky for Mitchell, though—he had gone through hell on earth, but he had finally found love. Noble, pure love. Just in time.

For Annie it was the other way around. Her life in death had only just begun. She had found him at the beginning of her eternity.

What a shame that their respective eternities had overlapped so briefly. Her beginning and his end.

* * *

A cup of tea is a controlled situation. Precious moments of peace float in with the steam from a cup of strong tea. Each cup, warm and reliable, is a small triumph in the battle of civility versus chaos.

Ergo, the more tea you make, the more fortified you are against the unknown.

Well, batten down the hatches. Buttress the walls. Man the ramparts.

If she had to stay, she'd stay and fight. He had fought the only way he saw possible: against himself. She'd fight for him. For everyone.

Tea time.


End file.
